Holding bags under water

I’m afraid celery would float with a house brick in the bag. Unless the house brick was sitting on the celery.

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Celery will always be a challenge because of its airy open cell structure.

That’s also why it’s difficult to clean for use in uncooked menu items. Celery is usually grown in organics-rich muck. For use in salad mixtures, i first blanch the diced celery.

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This product is what I use works fine. Place it in sideways to hold down the pouch. Each spike can be removed to accommodate a thick steak.

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Every time I’ve looked on Amazon it says Livapi can’t be shipped to AU. Did you use a reshipper?

Anyone else have a problem with their Variera RUSTING? Used it maybe 10-12 hours before mine started rusting.

When I was using a stockpot I made rack with several parallel rails to sit on top of the pot. Suspended smaller bags from the rails with binder clips or clothes pins, with weights clipped to the bottoms of the bags. This worked great for cooking multiples of small items, like batch cooking chicken breasts, etc. Most any material could be used, I just lashed together some oversized cooking chopsticks with zip ties.

Livapi looks great, but the prices I’ve seen in Australia are nuts.

If you have problems with a bag floating, pick up a decent-size pebble from the nearest creek or your garden and put it on top. Problem solved. Or toss one or two dinner plates or similar on top. Your kitchen will probably be full of things that can be used as weights.

No. It was shipped direct, and bought direct from Lapavi.

We have the same problem here in Canada - the Lipavi pricing is absolutely insane!!! I’d suggest you get a cheap rack like the sous vide supreme, then keep your eyes on eBay.com for a seller that’s willing to ship internationally (that’s what I did).

Depending on the size of your vessel, the L10 might be a better rack for you.

Heh…here’s one eBay reseller that does international shipping:

Cheers!

Thank you for the heads up! When I contacted them a couple of years ago they told me they couldn’t ship to me from Amazon, and had no plans for that. There’s now an AU seller, but the price+postage is really high. Including postage, the Amazon price comes to around $70 AUD. I will wait for the rate of exchange to improve a bit. Used to be you just had to wait for a bit of bad news to improve the rate, if only briefly. Now it seems that no amount of appalling news (and not any shortage of that) makes any difference.

Yikes, with shipping that comes to around $92 AUD. Amazon usually offers better shipping rates than anyone on eBay, IF they will ship. And it seems that now they will, yay. Thank you for the link.

How does the water circulate under the bag if it’s being held down by a plate? Or am I not picturing this correctly?

You can typically put the plate at an angle. Even if you put it straight on top, things will still work. You’ll have creases and bumps on the surface of the bag, so there are normally enough gaps for the water. And the plate gets just as hot as the water.

I’m still confused, how does water circulate under the food if the plate is sitting on top of it, pushing it flat against the bottom of the container?

It need not push the food flat against the bottom of the container if you position things right. If if it does, plate, food, and container end up all at the same temperature regardless.

If you are concerned with circulation underneath your food it’s actually pretty easy to resolve.
My wife had a couple cheap cooling wire racks that she had purchased at a local “dollar store”, so I just use one of them under my food during a cook. The wire these racks are made of is quite small gauge, allowing excellent water flow under my food.

I just took a look on Amazon and found the ‘Baker’s Secret Cooling Rack, 10" X 16"’ being sold - $6.99 for a pair.

Those collapsible metal steamer baskets work great. I’ve also pinned bags down with a pair of tongs or a spatula.

If you get a cooling/baking rack to keep your food off the bottom of your vessel, you really want to get a stainless steel one (the chrome plated ones rust).

eg.

Or just use three or four pebbles from the garden… Granite rusts even less than stainless steel :slight_smile:

I thought we were supposed to worry about having unimpeded water flow around all sides of the food? I was concerned that pinning the bag flat to the bottom of the container under a plate as suggested wouldn’t allow sufficient water flow underneath.

I use a variety of racks in the bottom of the container, depending on what I’m cooking and in which container. If I’m only doing a single flat bag, there’s a number of good options, the easiest for me is to just drop another cooling rack on top. I like being able to see the bag, a failed seam rapidly makes a mess in the container. Doing multiples is a different problem.

Every bit of stainless steel I’ve used eventually rusts, which is why I’d like to get an adjustable rack made for the purpose. Livapi mentions that the grade of stainless they use will never rust, and being adjustable should also deal with any floating tendencies, as a bonus :slight_smile: